Showing posts with label Michael Newton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Newton. Show all posts

Monday, August 30, 2021

The Hunter #1: The Ripper


The Hunter #1: The Ripper, by Mike Newton
No month stated, 1978  Publisher’s Consultants

The first of the two-volume The Hunter series, (not to be confused with the other Hunter series) The Ripper features hero Detective Jon Steel, a Los Angeles cop who is very much a clone of Dirty Harry, only as mentioned he’s in LA instead of San Francisco, and also he carries a .357 instead of a .44. Author Mike Newton turned out the series for low-rent Publisher’s Consultants, but in content and presentation (ie the visual look of the book, with its big print, short page count, and frequent typos) it comes off exactly like something from Belmont Tower or Leisure Books. 

What’s interesting about The Ripper is that it proves Newton was capable of writing a lurid cash-in himself; I only mention this because, years later in How To Write Action-Adventure Novels, Newton sneered at such books, in particular the “Rambosploitation” cover of Firefight. And also let’s not forget how he raked Soldier For Hire #8 and Behind The Door over the coals for their unbridled sleaziness. Well folks, Newton here is sleazier than either of those books, and “Jon Steel” is pure “Dirty Harrysploitation.” Mind you, none of this is a complaint. I love sleazy and lurid and violent cash-ins. In fact, I’d rather read them than the books they’re ripping off. And what’s crazy is, Newton here turns out a book that’s better than any of the official Dirty Harry tie-ins Warner Books was to begin publishing in a few years. At least, better than any of the ones I’ve read. 

Newton also turns in a book that’s of a piece with the Ryker and Keller books; again, The Ripper could’ve easily been a product of either BT or Leisure. It has the same brutal, misogynist, sleazy, and nihilistic tone as any of the “tough cops” books those imprints put out in the ‘70s. Which is to say it was a whole helluva lot of fun to read. In fact I never suspected Michael Newton had a book like this in him! It barrels along over the short course of 158 big-print pages, Newton doling out frequent scenes of excess sleaze, murder, and mayhem, with a “hero” who comes off like such a bastard that even Joe Ryker (or his alter ego Joe Keller) would be taken aback. Again all of which is to say, The Ripper was more fun than I thought it would be. 

Plot-wise the book is also identical to the Ryker or Keller novels: there’s a killer loose, one who preys on hookers, and it’s up to pure bastard cop Jon Steel to arrest him. Or kill him – Steel, we’ll learn, isn’t much bothered with rules and regulations, and would just as soon waste his prey. And speaking of “prey,” presumably “The Hunter” of the series title is Steel himself, but he never really thinks of himself as such. There is a slight connotation that he’s hunting the killer, but it’s not really exploited much and perhaps was just Newton trying to cater in some way to the series title. And speaking of which, per an interview with Newton that Justin Marriott conducted several years ago (but which I don’t believe was ever published?), Newton wrote a scad of novels for this publisher, which ended up publishing them under various titles and pseudonyms. So I’m not sure how much input he even had into the series title. 

Also the Ripper of the title is really two guys…at least at novel’s start. We see them in action as they pull up in their blue van with custom paint job (dueling “vikings” on the side – and I wanna say Newton was inspired by Frank Frazetta’s legedary cover for Conan Of Cimmeria), pick up a hooker on the Sunset Strip, negotiate price, and then take her out to the countryside so they can rape and kill her. Yes folks, it’s one of those books, just grimy and depraved to the core. And Newton doesn’t pull away from any of it, either, with a squirm-inducing opening that’s along the lines of Corporate Hooker, Inc. in the misery the poor hooker goes through. Or “whore,” as Newton constantly refers to her and her fellow streetwalkers throughout. But anyway she’s “opened like a fish from pubis to sternum in a single disembowling stroke,” per our hero’s estimation of the carnage when he views the girl’s corpse the next day. 

This is actually the second such kill; Steel’s already on the case when we meet him and the papers have dubbed the mysterious “whore”-killer “The Ripper.” Steel is only vaguely described, but again you can’t help but see Clint Eastwood: he’s tall and thin and carries a massive revolver. But in his case it’s a .357 Colt Python…which again goes against Newton’s later How-To book, which ridiculed cop thrillers that had its protagonists toting whatever gun they’d like. Again, this isn’t a complaint. I don’t want realism in a violent cop thriller. Newton has done his research on crime scene investigation and police procedure though, or at least seems to have, with Steel investigating this latest corpse and knowing immediately it’s not the work of a copycat. 

This brings us to one of my favorite elements of the tough cop genre: the arbitrary action scene. Steel picks up a call on the radio of an officer down, and heads on over to an all-night grocery store that’s being knocked over. Two radical-types are barricaded within, shooting down the cops with a carbine. Steel, familiar with the place from previous robberies, descends into the place and takes on the two radicals in gory fashion: “The magnum roared again, a solitary word of disgust. The heavy slug passed between Arty’s silently moving lips, clipped his spine with surgical precision at the base of his skull, and then erupted from the back of his head in a frothy shower of blood, brain, and splintered bone.” This mind you occurs right after Steel has blown off the punk’s arm. The other radical is wasted in similar fashion. 

The third would-be Ripper victim happens to be packing a .25 derringer and manages to get the drop on the two killers. She shoots one of them but is knifed savagely in return, leading to corpse three, but she also manages to take out one of the two Rippers. This proves to be the biggest break in the case for Steel, and he soon discovers that the dead punk was the son of a prominent doctor. After grilling the guy and his wife in their mansion, Steel figures out that Ripper number two is also a child of wealth – the twenty-something son of “a professional liberal” city councilman who hates the cops and likes to side with poor minorities in causes, despite being a wealthy white guy and etc. 

But for being a tough cop with 15 years of experience on the force, Steel is kind of dumb, in a plot-convenient sort of way of course. He finds out where the punk lives and breaks into his apartment, where he finds all kinds of incriminating evidence. The killer shows up and Steel gives chase, ultimately beating the shit out of the punk and calling in the arrest. And then hours later Steel is called downtown, where he’s informed, of course, that the kid’s been let go, given that Steel broke into his place and thus destroyed his entire case. But after this we have a humorous sequence in which the city councilman’s hotstuff socialite wife shows up at Steel’s place to offer herself in exchange for her son’s freedom, oblivious to the fact that he’s already been let go, and Steel takes her up on the offer: 


What makes it humorous is that here we are reminded again what a bastard Steel is. When the lady’s all done she asks when she can expect her son to be back on the streets, and Steel only chooses this moment to let her know the kid’s already back on the streets, let go due to a technicality. The lady is of course shocked at the revelation that she just gave herself to Steel for nothing, but our hero counsels her, “Try to think of it as occupational training.” After this we jump forward two months and once again see the Ripper back in action. This is one of the more lurid scenes in the novel, with the freak picking up yet another “whore” and getting her naked, then whipping out the switchblade and beginning to skin her alive. When Steel shows up on the scene it’s nothing more than a skinless lump of meat left behind. 

The finale also takes a page from Dirty Harry and ratchets it up a couple notches. Steel doesn’t just chase down the killer and shoot him…he mauls him, ties him up to a merry-go-round, and guts him. Again there is no concern over realism; it would be clear to any and all that Steel killed the kid, but this is not a concern of the novel. At any rate Steel only featured in one more novel: The Satan Ring, which has the promising setup of Steel versus Satanism. I think I’ll have to check that one out sometime. Both it and The Ripper have been released as eBooks; I have the original paperback of The Ripper but not The Satan Ring, and given that it’s priced too high on the used books market I’ll probably just resort to the digital edition. 

Newton got his start working with Don Pendleton, and there are several Pendletonisms throughout The Ripper, from random “yeah” affirmations in the narrative to describing bullets as “hollow-point minimag slugs.” But as mentioned The Ripper is sleazier than any Executioner novel, and I’d be curious if Newton ran this one by Pendleton for his constructive feedback!

Thursday, June 4, 2020

The Executioner #68: Prairie Fire


The Executioner #68: Prairie Fire, by Michael Newton
August, 1984  Gold Eagle Books

Certainly one of Newton’s best efforts, and possibly one of the best Mack Bolan stories ever by any writer, including the redoubtable Don Pendleton himself. -- William H. Young, A Study Of Action-Adventure Fiction 

I picked up this early Michael Newton installment of The Executioner several years ago, based off Young’s glowing review, and I have to say he was pretty accurate. This really is “a very special installment” of the series, throttling way back on the usual action overload and focusing more on suspense – with an appropriately action-packed climax. Also, being so early in the Gold Eagle years, the “Pendletonisms” are in full force, so it seems there must’ve been some sort of editorial mandate to make the books actually read like the work of creator Don Pendleton.

And Newton succeeds, though he could be accused a little of overkill, almost to the point of parody; you could start a drinking game over how many narrative sentences include the random “right” or “yeah” or even “damn right.” You know, those periodic affirmative asides Pendleton would sprinkle into his original Executioners. But also like Pendleton, Newton strives to give us a human hero – one who would be increasingly hard to believe in as the series would continue running on and on and on – with Bolan’s constant regret over not living a normal life, how there’s only “one logical end” to his war, etc. But in Prairie Fire it works, because Mack “The Executioner” Bolan does not have his usual accoutrements to rely on, being hunted by armed foes in the cornfields of Kansas, and he must use his cunning and craft to turn the tables.

First though we have a prologue in which we learn that Bolan is once again on his own, without “official sanction,” just as he’d been back during the Pendleton run. Stony Man, the compound he was working out of from the earliest Gold Eagle installments, has been destroyed, and April, Bolan’s girlfriend, has been killed. I’ve never actually read a novel with April in it so I have no idea what the character was like. I also assume this one’s a sequel to the Stony Man Doctrine standalone, which was written by G.H. Frost; I have that one, but have never read it. Actually it might be a sequel to Day Of Mourning, by Stephen Mertz – I’m really not up on Gold Eagle lore, as when I got into the various series books it was later in the ‘80s, long after these early installments.

Newton doen’t waste much time with this, though, other than Bolan’s occasional rumination that he no longer has “sanction” (the word is repeated enough times that I assume it must’ve specified in the final Pendleton installments, which I believe lay the groundwork for the Gold Eagle run). Instead, we meet “the runner” as he desperately tries to evade his former captors, running through the cornfields. It is of course Bolan, but in this first chapter Newton just refers to him as “the runner.” He’s in a bad way, too; shot and bleeding, his hands cuffed. We’ll learn he was here due to some plot by an “offshore” enemy (likely those friggin’ Soviets) who plotted to sabotage a microchip-processing plant. This entire subplot is a MaGuffin, just setup for the meat of the book, which is Bolan defending himself and a few countryfolk against an invading army of mercenaries.

Bolan’s pursuers are a team of mercs headed by The Cowboy, a veteran mercenary in a cowboy hat and mirrored shades, his look and persona modelled after the Westerns he watched as a kid. We get the occasional cutover scene to him, marshalling his troops and providing strategy, but unfortunately the character sort of fell flat for me. He is treated a little too realistically and needed to be more outlandish. But then, it’s the ‘80s now, not to mention a Gold Eagle book, so the colorful pulpy elements of the ‘70s have been gutted. More damningly, he doesn’t do much to invoke the reader’s hate; we meet Bolan after he’s already escaped the Cowboy’s men, and the villain himself doesn’t even confront our hero until the final pages, a moment Gil Cohen depicts for his memorable cover.

It’s certainly an unusual installment, and for the most part plays like a standalone novel, or even more of a standard thriller – I could easily see this plot being used for a Jack Reacher novel. This is particularly true of the one-off characters who come to Bolan’s aid in his desperate escape from the Cowboy and his hunters. Bolan comes upon a farm and collapses in the barn, only to be discovered by a young lady – and an old man bearing a shotgun. The young lady is named Toni, and the old man is Jason, her father-in-law and a WWII vet. There’s also Jason’s wife Emma here on the farm. Eventually we’ll learn that Toni’s husband, a cop, was killed in the line of duty, and she’s been staying with his parents ever since – Newton develops a tragic, mournful subplot for Toni, but doesn’t overplay it.

First though Bolan’s too busy trying to convince Jason not to blow his head off. The old vet wants to take Bolan to the sheriff in town, but it’s too late already and for some reason the truck won’t start. And also the phone’s not working. Bolan suspects the hunters have tracked him down and have cut off any means of escape. But really this is the only stumbling part of Prairie Fire. We know from the few cutaway sequences to the Cowboy that he has indeed tracked down Bolan to the farm, but he’s holding his men back, ensuring there aren’t a bunch of gun-brandishing farmers in there, etc. But clearly the action is held off in an effort to build up the suspense…and also to fill up a novel.

Instead, the focus becomes more on the tension in the house as Jason slowly begins to realize that this handcuffed, bleeding stranger might not be a dangerous criminal. And meanwhile Toni’s already fallen for his rugged masculinity, believing in his innocence from the get-go. Bolan isn’t one to plead, though; in fact he encourages Jason to get him to the local Sheriff, as he knows his presence here in the barn puts everyone in jeopardy. When Jason discovers a block of C4 in the truck next morning (the villains kindly allowing Bolan to have a full night’s sleep), he realizes Bolan’s story is legit. The handcuffs are snapped off, Bolan’s allowed a shower (of course Toni manages to “accidentally” barge in on him), given a nice country breakfast, and then it’s down to the serious business of planning for defense against a group of heavily-armed mercenaries. Meanwhile all Bolan has is a block of C4, some old blasting caps, Jason’s .22 rifle, and other household odds and ends.

It’s like Maguyver as Bolan starts jury-rigging weapons; a particularly cool one is the set of “homemade grenades” which are composed of roofing nails jammed into cans, with a squib of C4 and a blasting cap on them. There isn’t much ammo for the .22, so Bolan basically ensures it still shoots. He also reinforces the doors and windows of the house and sets various traps. And, more importantly, finds a little time to get cozy with Toni. Nothing too explicit, but at least you know what’s happening – and definitely a surprise in the otherwise sex-free Gold Eagle world. Bolan, in “role camo” as a farmer in straw hat and overalls, goes out to the barn to check on things, pretending to just be a random farmhand for all the mercs he assumes are out there spying on the place. Then Toni follows along without telling him and basically throws herself on him in the barn. Newton again plays it more on the emotional tip, with both Bolan and Toni, who have each suffered great losses, finding temporary solace in one another.

The novel’s sole action scene begins on page 132 and runs for the rest of the book. The Cowboy’s men make their assault on the farm at night, their submachine guns outfitted with silencers. Bolan has fortified the farmhouse as best he can, and there’s more carnage and gore than I thought there’d be, with the Cowboy’s mercs getting fried by electrified wire on screen doors and their faces blown off by homemade grenades. Bolan dishes out some death with the .22 rifle, but appropriates whatever dropped subguns he can. Even here he can’t catch a break, with many of the guns he picks up already being low on ammo. Jason and his wife don’t get much spotlight, other than Jason’s brief flashback to fighting the Japanese as a Marine in the war, but Toni gets to chop some dude with a butcher knife.

It has the vibe of Night Of The Living Dead mixed with Assault On Precinct 13, and more importantly it seems like something that could’ve come out of one of the Pendleton installments. Bolan is presented as human in the battle scene, despite taking out a goodly amount of heavily-armed mercs with nothing more than household items. As mentioned the cover moment comes into play in the finale, with the Cowboy getting hold of Toni and putting his stainless .44 to her head. But Toni’s no shrieking victim and gets a good grab of a delicate part of the Cowboy’s anatomy, which leads to a brutal hand-to-hand confrontation between Bolan and the villain. We of course know who the victor will be, but it’s nicely done because Bolan’s so spent and enraged from the past couple days that he ends up sort of “double-killing” the Cowboy.

Overall this was an enjoyable volume of the series, well-written by Newton and with a fine sense of tension and suspense. Also there was good characterization throughout. Again, would’ve made for a fine standalone thriller, but I suspect the average Gold Eagle reader would expect more action.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

The Executioner #124: Night Kill


The Executioner #124: Night Kill, by Michael Newton
April, 1989  Gold Eagle Books

Yet another novel I learned about via Michael Newton’s How To Write Action-Adventure Novels, Night Kill is actually by Newton himself; in the how-to book he showed us the outline he used to pitch the novel to Gold Eagle. And just like Psycho Squad #1, this is another men’s adventure novel clearly inspired by Maury Terry’s The Ultimate Evil, which is even namedropped on the first page.

In fact Night Kill is basically the men’s adventure version of Terry’s true crime masterpiece, doling out the same lurid “Satanic crime” details through a character who himself seems to be based on Maury Terry. This is Dr. Amos Carr (the last name itself a tip-off to The Ultimate Evil), a former cop who now is an investigative journalist, one who is known for exposing cult crimes. Bolan is put in contact with Carr via Hal Brognola, who has Bolan meet the man in Denver, where Carr is currently staying during his latest research.

The novel also comes off like a men’s adventure variant of Skipp and Spector’s The Scream (which I haven’t yet read), as Carr’s certain that the recent string of “Satanic cult murders” across the US is connected to the thrash metal group Apocalypse. Wherever Apocalypse tours, cultlike murders follow in their wake, and already two such killings have occurred here in Denver, even though the band has just arrived for their two-day concert engagement. After showing Bolan a slideshow of cult crimes and giving him a whole bunch of background on them (the majority of course taken from The Ultimate Evil), Carr succeeds in making Bolan agree that something rotten is going on.

Ironically, Bolan himself is practically a supporting character in Night Kill. He barely appears throughout the first hundred pages, and when he does he’s relegated to standing around and listening to other characters talk. Amos Carr comes off like the true protagonist, the one who does all of the research and legwork, the one who has all of the connections and makes things happen. Also ironic is that there’s hardly any action in the novel. Other than an unrelated battle scene against Irish terrorists in the opening pages, the “action” is relegated to cult murders and a quick climatic fight in the very final pages as Bolan takes on the Satanists.

Night Kill like other Gold Eagle publications of the era is too long for its own good. It runs to 253 pages, and that’s small print, baby. So many, many pages are superfluous, and clear indication that Newton was hard-pressed to fill the word quota. As is customary for Gold Eagle books, a lot of this material is given over to various characters who are introduced in leisurely fashion, and who are then either promptly killed or turn out to not have much to do with anything.

For example, we get several scenes from the viewpoints of various teen girls as they sneak out of the house to attend the Apocalypse concert. Corralled by the “hunters” who are part of the Satanic cult that has worked itself around the band, the girls are then lured to a “party” which turns out to be their place of death: sacrificial altars set up around cemeteries where the girls are drugged, tied up, and murdered. The hell of it is, though, all of these sequences are basically the same, despite being different girls each time.

Amos Carr also takes up a lot of the narrative, and humorously enough his contacts in the “occult world” know all about the Chingons and the Children of the Flame (supposedly the true force behind the Son of Sam murders) and etc, as if there’s an occult newspaper they all read. One thing I’ve always loved about Christian paranoia tales is that people in the occult are always “in the know,” like there’s this Satanic grapevine that keeps them all up-to-date on everything in the occult world.

But anyway, one of Carr’s contacts turns out to be a very attractive witch named Cassandra “Cass” Poole who, as we learn in the many sequences from her viewpoint, soon develops certain thoughts about Bolan. These thoughts are actualized in a Wiccan ritual Bolan attends with her (for absolutely no reason); Cass asks Bolan if he will “assist” her in the last part of the ritual, which entails the two of them bumping uglies beneath a tree. The sex scene here is more explicit than I expected it to be – nothing outrageous or anything, but more than I figured Gold Eagle would allow. At any rate it was nice to know Bolan can still get lucky every once in a while.

Many pages are also given over to the cult of Satanists who have infiltrated Apocalypse’s camp; the group’s “spiritual adviser,” a longhaired occultist named Lucian Slate, is a full-on Satanist, and has ties with one of the more violent cults. Made up of a group of “hunters” who work for a leader who calls himself Scratch, the cult is clearly based on the Children of the Flame. And Scratch himself is clearly based on Manson II, Maury Terry’s name for a “superstar of the occult world” who was a professional hitman who pulled off at least one of the Son of Sam murders (per David Berkowitz). Manson II by the way was still a mystery when Night Kill was published, but when the paperback edition of The Ultimate Evil came out later in 1989, he was outed as William Mentzer…who apparently lived right down the road from me at the time, in Cumberland, Maryland!!

Newton to his credit doesn’t just rake the Satanists over the coals; he also pokes fun at the televangelist movement that was so popular at the time. This is courtesy Reverend Jordan Braithwaite, whose growing ministry is based on longwinded rants against Satan, heavy metal, and Apocalypse in particular. We get way too many pages with Braithwaite, in particular the sermons he delivers, one for example which Bolan watches on TV, as if Newton’s desperate to fill up the pages. Braithwaite we gradually learn has ulterior motives, and many more pages are devoted to his own squabblings with the cult.

Really, Night Kill is an exercise in patience. It’s comprised of too much inessential detail and too many inessential characters, and it just sort of drifts along. Even a lurid bit midway through, where Bolan takes out a kiddie porn producer with ties to the cult, lacks much punch. And the finale is anticlimactic, with Cass abducted by Scratch, who plans to make her the last sacrifice before Apocalypse splits Denver. Bolan, clad in blacksuit, races to save the day, taking on his outclassed opponents in one of the more perfunctory action scenes I’ve ever read.

So long story short, whereas this novel could’ve been a lurid, sensationlistic blitz of twisted action, like Able Team #8 but with Satanists instead of drug-zombified gangbangers, Newton has instead gone for a true crime approach, keeping it all realistic.

But as far as I’m concerned, if you’re writing the 124th installment of a series titled The Executioner, “realistic” shouldn’t even be a consideration.